


1981 •

by softpine



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softpine/pseuds/softpine
Summary: Around and around they go.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 66





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Typical warnings related to Finn apply: child death, murder, ghosts, etc. This also mentions child abuse, but nothing is shown or written out.
> 
> * Griffin = 1981, alive Griffin.  
> * Finn = Current, ghost Griffin.

White-hot sunlight burns Asa’s eyes on impact. He raises a hand to block it and blinks his eyes into focus, his senses slowly coming back to him. As he registers Finn’s shoulder brushing up against his, Asa lets out a sigh of relief. It’s risky enough to travel like this. He’s thankful for the company.

“Where are we?” Finn whispers. He always whispers at first, like he’s afraid someone will hear him in this unchanging, movie-reel memory.

“It’s your memory,” Asa says, finally lowering his hand and taking in the sight of the house before him. “I’m just… Borrowing it.”

Asa peers around the corner just as a young boy in a Cub Scouts uniform walks up the path. He adjusts his backpack, ruffles his hair, and knocks on the front door. He rocks back and forth on his feet until the door swings open, a red-haired woman stepping out to greet him.

“Grandma Rosie,” Asa says, smiling. “Wow. She looks so young.”

“She’s  _ your _ grandma?” Finn’s eyes go wide.

“Yeah. Isa, too.”

They turn their attention to Griffin, who’s tightening up the handkerchief around his neck. He fidgets a lot, Asa notices. Finn doesn’t fidget like that.

“Do you wanna buy a chocolate bar?” Griffin asks, gesturing towards his backpack. “I have milk chocolate, chocolate with almonds, and dark chocolate. But no one ever buys the dark chocolate, so, just so you know, it’s a little old.”

Rosie laughs, already pulling out her wallet. “I’ll take the dark chocolate off your hands. Isa loves it.”

Griffin puts his backpack on the ground, excitedly unzipping it and collecting a handful of candy bars. When he stands back up, the sun hits his face from the left side, illuminating a cluster of scratches with deep, purple bruises underneath. Asa sees it as soon as Rosie does.

“You know what… I think I’ll buy everything you’re selling.” Rosie says slowly. She has this familiar look on her face. It’s the look she sends Asa when he asks a little to many questions about death or ghosts or Heaven or Hell. It’s her ‘concerned but not prying’ look.

Asa risks a glance at Finn, but his expression is frigid and frustratingly emotionless.

“Really?” Griffin asks Rosie. “You don’t have to.”

“Ah, it’s not a big deal,” Rosie says. She pulls a fifty out of her wallet. “It’s for a fundraiser, isn’t it?”

“Uh, y-yeah. My class is going to France.”

“Is that right?” Asa says, nudging Finn.

Finn shrugs. “Well, I never went to France, so…”

His face is all pinched up like he just ate a lemon — It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. “So…” Asa says, wanting more than anything to make him smile. “You basically scammed my grandma?”

“I was saving the money for later,” Finn scowls. “But, hey, my parents probably found it and used it for my funeral, so at least it wasn’t wasted.”

Asa looks down to the sidewalk. Guilt creeps up his spine.

“I’m sorry,” Finn says, letting out a long breath of air. “I’m just not feeling it today. Can we please go back?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Asa says. “I shouldn’t have made you come in the first place. It was stupid.”

In front of them, Griffin upturns his bag, shaking candy bars out into Rosie’s arms. Asa looks at him once more before slipping past him, through the still-ajar front door. Finn follows him dutifully, looking around the kitchen with curious eyes. Asa guesses he’s never been inside before.

“I thought we were going home,” Finn says, when he’s done admiring the dated vinyl flooring and wood-paneled cabinets.

“We are.”

Finn just blinks at him, unconvinced.

“I have this theory — ” Asa starts.

“You and your theories.”

“I have this  _ theory, _ ” Asa continues. “When I was little, my moms took me to this corn maze, and we got lost. We were in there for  _ hours _ . My moms were yelling at each other and drawing all over the map, and I guess I wandered away while they weren’t looking.”

If he closes his eyes, he can still smell the manure, hear the mud squishing under his every step. They were sweating and miserable and angry. He just wanted to go home, that was all.

“When they realized I was gone, they started yelling for me. I yelled back, but I was too far away. They couldn’t find me. So my mom told me to put my hand on the right-side wall and follow it all the way to the end.”

“Did it work?” Finn asks.

Asa nods. “Even if you feel like you’re going in circles, you’ll always reach the end.”

“So we need to find our own right-hand wall.”

“Yeah!” Asa smiles. He gestures at the room around them. “This is it. We’ve both been here before, so there won’t be any gaps. We can just cycle through time until we get back to the present. I mean… If it works the way I hope it will.”

“Okay,” Finn says. For the first time all day, there’s a real smile on his face. “I like that plan.”

Asa sits down on the floor, gesturing for Finn to join him. Leaning up against the cabinets, the knobs pressed uncomfortably against their spines — as if they were really there, inside that kitchen, in 1981 — Asa turns to Finn and says, “Thanks for being here. I know I didn’t really give you a choice, but… Thanks.”

“ _ Someone _ has to make sure you get back in one piece,” Finn rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling all the same. “Why’d you want to come here anyway? I mean, your grandmas are still alive. If you missed them, you could’ve just called.”

“It’s not that,” Asa says. “Grandma Rosie mentioned you once, and… Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re  _ real, _ not some hallucination. I just wanted to see you together. To prove it.”

Asa doesn’t know how to read the expression on Finn’s face. He flounders, adding, “And it’s cool to see what my grandma looked like without wrinkles.”

Finn laughs. He’s opening his mouth to say something, when he’s interrupted. Isa enters the kitchen with one of Asa’s uncles on her hip — Owen, maybe? — and pushes back the curtains to scan the front yard. “¿Dónde está mamá?” She points at Rosie through the window. “ _ Delante _ de nosotros.”

Owen just giggles.

“You’ll get there,” Isa says, and then sets him down. He immediately toddles away, stepping right through Asa’s foot as he goes. Like he’s made of nothing but thin air. And he  _ is _ — here, at least.

The front door closes again as Rosie and Isa meet in the middle of the room. Isa takes half the candy bars off her hands, dumping them on the dining table.

“What’s all this?” Isa asks.

“The neighbor kid was selling chocolate again.”

“So you cleaned him out?” Isa chuckles, sifting through the pile until she reaches the dark chocolate. She happily unwraps it and eats most of it in one bite.

Rosie shifts on her feet, her eyes darting around the room. For one moment, Asa thinks she sees him, and he’s about to stand up and explain —  _ How can he explain this? _ — when her eyes slide past him and back onto Isa. “I think… I should talk to someone. About Griffin.”

Isa chews slowly, sighing. “Yeah… What do we do, call the station? Or CPS?”

Finn’s mouth falls open in shock before he collects himself and returns to his stony glare. “Let’s go,” he says. “Next memory.”

Asa nods, closing his eyes without complaint. Finn’s nervous energy is radiating off of him; Asa doesn’t have to see his face to feel it. He searches for a time, a place, a feeling — anything that will get them away from this conversation. He feels like an intruder in his own grandmas’ home.

Rosie and Isa’s voices fade out, distorted, skipping a word and then two and then whole sentences. When Asa peeks an eye open, the room is spinning and appears discolored, like a printer running out of ink, veering off the page.

Just as suddenly as the spinning started, it stops. Asa takes a deep breath, thinks of his therapist, and counts in  _ one, two, three, four _ ; out  _ one, two, three, four _ . Finn stares at him curiously.

“Okay,” Asa says when his heart stops racing. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that. “Where are we?”

The kitchen cabinets have been painted navy blue, the vinyl replaced with plain white tile, and the wall that once separated the kitchen from the living room has been knocked down. Quiet voices filter in from the couch, punctuated by muffled sobs. Asa pushes himself up off the floor and heads for the noise.

Rosie, now with less vibrant but not completely white hair, is hunched over, her face in her hands. Isa rubs her back, her own face streaked with tears. “She’ll come home,” Isa says, and then repeats it, as if she’s trying to convince herself too.

“Oh, I know what’s happening,” Asa says to Finn. “My mom told me about it. She ran away with my dad instead of finishing high school. They wanted to get famous.”

“Wow, that sounds like something from a movie.”

“Yeah, but not as cool… I guess she was pretty miserable,” Asa says. “Anyway, she told me she would kill me if I ever pulled a stunt like that.”

Asa has half a mind to talk to Rosie and Isa. To tell them that they’ll see their daughter again soon, that she’ll be okay — better than ever, actually. But Finn is giving him a disapproving look. “I don’t know if we should be changing things,” Finn says. “I mean… It’s your choice, but… I don’t know.”

“No, you’re right,” Asa sighs, giving his grandmas one last parting glance before he closes his eyes again. 

Around and around they go.

They sit through everything from birthday parties to mundane chores, from coming home from work to Christmas morning. Finn asks if they can stop there, just for a minute, and he pretends to play with the toy train under the tree for an almost uncomfortable amount of time. Asa forgets that Finn was just a kid. That he never got the chance to grow out of things like this, to decide that he’s “too old” for toy trains. For all that Finn seems to be growing up with Asa, part of him will probably always be that little kid.

Through memories, Asa watches himself grow up. Watches himself be totally, completely, unconditionally loved by everyone around him. He tries to speed through these memories, all the holidays and the milestones, for Finn’s sake. Finn never asked him to, but it feels wrong to shove it in his face like that. Asa’s worst memory, before Aileen, was slipping on a patch of ice and scraping up his knee. How is he supposed to reconcile with that? What does he know about pain?

“I can’t believe it, but this is actually working,” Finn says, drawing Asa out of his own head. He’s standing in front of a calendar that reads:  _ January 2020 _ . “Good call.”

Asa smiles proudly. “Just one more, I think.”

He closes his eyes.

The world goes black.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No major trigger warnings this time! Just general death/ghost warnings.

Asa feels the change as soon as his vision comes back to him. The air feels electrified. Different. He doesn’t need to see the calendar to know that they’ve gone back, not forward.

“ _ Why? _ ” Asa says aloud, frustration making his heart squeeze. Why did he even come here? Was it worth it? Has it ever been worth it?

Finn paces the kitchen. “Asa, something is wrong.”

“I know,” Asa says. “But it’s just a set-back, we can still go forward.”

“No, I mean — Something feels different. Like…”

Asa blinks, and they’re no longer alone. He’s become so accustomed to Aileen being around him, he almost doesn’t notice her anymore — Except when she’s wailing and he’s trying to sleep. This time, though, this time  _ does _ feel different. Aileen has never followed him into the past before. He hadn’t known she even  _ could. _

“We need to go,” Finn says firmly, grabbing Asa’s shoulder. “I can’t — I can’t be here.”

Asa wants to tell him that Aileen can’t see them. She probably doesn’t know who Finn is or what he did. But the words die in his mouth as soon as Aileen opens hers.

“Caroline,” Aileen says, clear as a bell. Asa nearly falls over. He’s never heard her say anything except her standard, nonsensical phrase. She certainly has never called out for anyone — not even Asa.

“Caroline.”

Finn is paralyzed, his eyes wide and locked on Aileen’s blood-soaked face.

“Caroline.”

Asa takes a shaky breath. “Aileen? Aileen, can you hear me?”

She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even acknowledge Asa, she just continues to speak, her voice growing louder and louder.

From the distance, a voice yells, “Jesus, I’m coming! Chill out!”

Hasty footsteps fall on the staircase, and Asa prays it’s not his mom. She’s never heard Aileen before, so why now? Why here?

Caroline rounds the corner, heading straight for Rosie. “What the hell is so important?” she asks.

Rosie looks up from her book. “What are you talking about?”

Asa can hear his own heart beating, drowning out their conversation. Every fiber of his being wants to leave, to take Finn and get the hell out of there. But he can’t leave his mom alone. What if Aileen stays? What would happen then?

“Nevermind, I guess…” Caroline says, shaking her head. She turns towards the stairs again, then pauses. Asa can see the goosebumps rising on her arms, can  _ feel _ her fear, the skipping of her heartbeat and the sweat beading up on her neck.

“Caroline,” Aileen says once more, in a triumphant, self-aware sort of way. “I don’t feel good. Will you take me to the hospital?”

Caroline trips over herself as she escapes, sparing not a single glance behind her. She’s silent, shell-shocked, but for the shaky breaths she draws in and out, and her feet pounding against the floor.

“Mom!” Asa yells. He’s running after her — He can’t help it, he can’t stop.

“Asa,” Finn hisses, grabbing his wrist. “We have to  _ go. _ ”

“Wait, but — ” He pulls away, taking the steps two at a time. “I did this. I brought Aileen here, she follows  _ me _ around. I  _ did _ this to my mom.”

“You didn’t do anything,” Finn says, desperate. “Please, can we talk about this somewhere else?”

Tears spring up in Asa’s eyes, the world turning into a kaleidoscope of colors, nothing more. He can’t see, he can’t  _ breathe _ —

“Do the breathing thing,” Finn says, his eyebrows drawn together with concern. “The… the counting thing you were doing earlier! Shit, how did it go?”

“It’s just — It’s just four…” Asa says, closing his eyes. “In four… Out four.”

When the world slowly comes back to him, Asa vaguely hears Beth’s voice, tinny through a speaker phone, coaching Caroline to do the very same breathing exercise.  _ “Fuck class,” _ Beth says. Asa has never heard her swear before.  _ “If you want me there, I’m there.” _

“See? She’s not alone either,” Finn says. “It’s okay. She doesn’t need us.”

“Everything keeps changing,” Asa sniffles, ignoring Finn completely. “Every time I think I’m in control of this, it switches up and something goes horribly  _ wrong _ . And it’s all my fault, because I couldn’t just… I couldn’t be  _ normal. _ ”

If Finn were a bad person, he would probably be saying  _ “I told you so” _ right now. But he’s a  _ good _ person, so he’s reaching out and saying, “Normal is boring.”

Asa shakes his head in disbelief. “So this is  _ fun? _ ”

“Well, not this, but — ” Finn shrugs. “Why do you think I keep coming back? It’s not because you asked me to. It’s not because you need protection. It’s because I like it. I like having a friend again. And even though it’s scary, this is so much better than being in that place. Being nowhere.”

Caroline is crying into the phone again, and Asa is once again struck with the notion that he did this to her. She never should have seen Aileen that way. Asa and Finn may have put themselves in this situation, but she never asked for this.

“Do you think this would’ve happened even if we never showed up here?” Asa asks, though he already knows the answer.

“I don’t know for sure, but… I used to visit my cousin, Liz. When I first… When everything happened,” Finn says, his eyes on the floor. “She could never see me, until one day when she just  _ could _ . Only that one time, though. After that, she had all these nightmares, so bad she couldn’t sleep, and she saw  _ others. _ Other people who… Died.”

Finn paces, his jaw clenched. Asa has never heard him talk so openly before. The moment feels fragile, like any wrong word would shatter it. “She checked herself into this  _ place _ , but it didn’t work. She still saw them. The only thing that made it stop was… Was when I left her alone. I stopped talking to her, and she stopped seeing them.”

“I didn’t know,” Asa says. “Thanks for telling me.”

There’s a small voice in the back of Asa’s mind wondering if Finn did the same thing to his cousin that he’s done to Asa, that Asa’s done to Caroline. That Finn opened a door he shouldn’t have. That he can never close it again, even if he wanted to.

Finn seems to hear the voice too. He looks at Asa with guarded eyes, like he’s preparing himself for… something. Whatever he’s waiting for, Asa doesn’t give it to him.

“I don’t know how long I’ve been gone,” Asa says. “We should probably move on.”

“You think we should pick a new wall?” Finn asks.

“What?”

“Your trick. Should we pick a new constant? In case Aileen follows us?”

“Oh, uh,” Asa blows air from his mouth and shrugs. “I guess? I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what she’s capable of.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Finn holds his hand out expectantly. Asa wishes he could hug his mom, like he’s done so many times before in these strange, reality-adjacent memories. She’s always been there for him when  _ he’s _ crying; it’s not fair that he can’t do the same for her. But he’s already altered enough.

He takes Finn’s hand.

※※※

“I’ve always been really close with my mom,” Asa says, watching Caroline spoon-feed him as a two year old. “I love my whole family, obviously, I just… Sometimes I can  _ feel _ her feelings. Like when she was scared earlier, I felt it. I was scared too.”

“I get it,” Finn says, even though his face says he definitely doesn’t get it.

The scene around them fades into something new, something older. It’s harder to go forward when they’re tethered to a person instead of a place. Caroline is everywhere at all times, moving constantly, never linearly. Aileen can’t catch her, but neither can Asa. They’re just as lost as they’ve always been.

They’ve landed in the apartment Asa and his moms used to live in, but he can tell that he hasn’t been born yet. The rooms are pristine — Beth’s influence, clearly — and there’s not a toy in sight. Caroline is standing near the door, begrudgingly putting on a thick winter coat that Beth threw at her moments earlier.

“Are you sure this won’t be weird?” She asks, biting her lip.

Beth finishes tying her shoes and says, “What, the coat? No, it looks good on you.”

“No, I mean this dinner. Seeing Danny. All of us being… Together. What if he’s lying about being cool with us? What if he —”

“Fights me like we’re on Maury?” Beth laughs. “Baby, I think you’re forgetting that I talk to him every day. It’s not weird. It’ll only be weird if  _ you _ make it weird.”

The topic of the conversation goes right over Asa’s head. All he can understand is the feeling of Caroline’s heart beating in her chest, a sick feeling in her stomach. He feels it in his own.

“Like, right now…,” Asa says, holding a hand over his heart. “She’s nervous. I can feel it.”

“Weird.” Finn says.

Asa has to laugh. It’s almost relieving to talk to someone who doesn’t have all the answers. It’s a level playing field.

Asa and Finn follow Caroline and Beth out of the apartment and into the bitter cold, hugging themselves and shivering. “You know what would be nice?” Finn grits his teeth to stop them from chattering. “If we could pick our own outfits.”

Asa thinks about it for a second, and then says, “Huh. I never realized we couldn’t.”

The next time he looks down at himself, he’s wearing a fluffy faux-fur jacket. He points at it and says, “Or maybe we can? Try it.”

Finn closes his eyes and thinks about it so hard that steam may as well be pouring out of his ears, but by the time he’s exhausted himself, he’s still wearing a flimsy black t-shirt. “Not fair,” he says. “How come you get to do all this cool shit?  _ I _ should be the one doing that.”

Asa rolls his eyes and shrugs his coat off, handing it to Finn. Finn examines it suspiciously, but slips it on nonetheless. “Thanks,” he says, looking down at the ground. If Asa didn’t know any better, he’d think he looks… Guilty.

“Crap, we lost them,” Asa says, barely catching a glimpse of his moms entering a pizza shop at the end of the road.

Finn jogs to catch up, standing in the way of the closing door. As he concentrates, the door freezes in place — Just long enough for Asa to squeeze through it. It swings shut seconds later, slamming into Finn’s forehead.

“Ow.”

“What did you do that for?” Asa giggles.

Finn puffs his chest up and practically  _ flexes _ . “I can do stuff too.”

“Sure you can, Popeye,” Asa says and steps further into the restaurant.

It’s strange, seeing his entire family together without him. He can’t believe it, but he actually feels _ jealous _ . He wants his parents to see him again. He wants to talk to them. He wants to be home, in his own room, not floating aimlessly through time. Why does he do this to himself? He stays home, he gets antsy. He travels, he gets homesick. He’s never satisfied. What if he’s never happy again?

Finn never opened the door for Asa. He ripped it off the hinges.

An overwhelmingly strong wave of nausea crashes over him, leaving him dizzy and breathless. “Finn…” he chokes out, his vision clouding over. 

“It’s your mom,” Finn says hurriedly. She falls to the ground with a thud, her head ricocheting against the tile before she goes limp. “I think she’s okay, she just — Asa? Asa!”

※※※

White.

White, not black.

The brightness blinds him from every angle, inescapable. He can hardly keep his eyes open. Is this Heaven? Or Hell fire?

“Finn?” he calls out.

The only response he receives are his own words’ echoes.

“Mom?” he tries.

Asa blinks his eyes into focus, ignoring the burning behind his eyelids. She’s lying next to him, struggling to sit up. “Mom,” he says again. Her eyes snap to him. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

He takes in a shaky breath as she finally realizes where she is. There’s that fear again — That heart-pounding, palm-sweating emotion, passed from Caroline to Asa. “I just wanted to see you,” he says. All those memories, all those old versions of his mom; things most people never get to see in their lifetimes. “I didn’t know you would see… everything.”

Tears drip down Caroline’s cheeks. She opens her mouth, but no words come out. Asa can’t tell if it’s because she can’t force them, or because she doesn’t know what to say. But Asa knows.

“I won’t visit you anymore,” he says. “No one will.”

This door is better left closed.

※※※

Dr. Peterson watches in disbelief as the patient violently awakens, ripping the sensors off his chest as he shoots upright. His oxygen monitor is still functioning, the numbers rising and rising and rising in tandem with his pulse.

Eight minutes of zero brain activity.

Eight minutes.

Reversed instantaneously.

Dr. Peterson jams her finger on the intercom button, exclaiming, “You gotta see this. Dr. Brennan, Dr. Jordan, Dr — Just bring everyone. Tell me I’m not imagining this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! I know this is so different to the content I usually post, but I'm so thankful that you decided to stick through and read this. I appreciate it more than you know ;-;


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